A mother who abandoned her four young children to go on a 24-hour drink and drug binge was given a suspended jail sentence today.

Rebecca Stevenson, 22, of Blackburn, Lancashire, left her two sons and two daughters, aged between three months and four years, home alone.

It was with "merciful good luck" that none of the children was seriously injured through her "absolute dereliction" of duty, Preston crown court heard.

Sentencing her to a 20-week jail term, suspended for two years, Judge Norman Wright said it was "an appalling state of affairs" that she had preferred to satisfy her own personal gratification rather than care for her children.

Stevenson said she put her children to bed at 8.30pm one evening in July this year and drank a bottle of wine before indulging in cider and cocaine when friends called round to her house.

Then in "a moment of madness", she told the court, she left the children to their own devices and went out to a house party. She carried on drinking throughout the following day at various pubs in the town before returning home at 10.30pm.

Steven Wild, prosecuting, said the children were discovered at 10am that day when the defendant's stepfather called round. The eldest daughter was leaning out of the lounge window, was rain-soaked and had clearly been crying, he said.

After climbing through the window he saw Stevenson's "hysterical" one-year-old son in his cot upstairs. The youngster was soaked in urine, as was a three-month-old boy who was also covered in vomit.

An attempt had been made by the four-year-old girl to feed the baby after the children used dining room chairs to climb up to a kitchen cupboard and reach a tin of milk powder.

"There were kitchen knives and sharp objects on the sofa which were within reach of the children," Wild added.

The children are now in the care of their grandparents, with Stevenson allowed only supervised visits.